[grande]
THE FACES OF THE SEA
by haruyuki
He knows he ought to feel disappointment, fury, disbelief, something. And he will, later. For the moment, though, as he stands at the net and watches Seigaku celebrate, Yukimura knows only a peaceful sort of emptiness, as if waking from a dream.
The entire time he waits for Echizen to return to the net, he doesn’t turn around -- doesn’t need to, to feel their gazes rivet him from behind, as steady and as persistent as the mid-afternoon sun that strikes his bare arms. They reach him with a stiff sort of support, as if trying to keep him upright. As if, in this one timeless moment in the aftermath of the match, the rest of his team was afraid that he would somehow physically fall. Collapsing, just like he had once before.
It would be easy to pretend that it was the absurdity of the thought that causes the smile to rise, unbidden, to his lips.
He doesn’t. He knows that there’s something else, something more.
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Despite what the unnatural accuracy of his predictions would suggest to someone who did not know him well, Renji does not believe at all in premonitions. Nor does he think that individual tennis matches can be treated as anything other than independent events, whose probabilities interact only in the simplest and slightest of ways, and whose outcomes are entirely unaffected by what came before and what will come after.
But how, then, does he explain the trepidation he feels as he’s calming Akaya down and leading him back to the stands after their match - the low-lying lump of panic in his stomach that suggests, irrationally, that everything was going to go wrong after this? How is it that he spends so much of the next three matches thinking about the concept of premonitions, if he does not have them and has never believed in them in the first place?
He wonders whether it is a side effect of this that, when the referee finally calls the game 6-4 in Echizen’s favor, his disbelief is not nearly as great as he’d expected it to be.
The next few minutes pass in jumps and starts, like a series of photographic stills that show a succession of faces, each its own distinct mixture of bewildered and angry and subdued. They appear in conjunction with a flurry of too-purposeful activity, as the non-regulars mill about the stands and pick things up in preparation for the awards ceremony.
He’s there in the middle of it all, taking in, analyzing each snapshot as it comes, and then mechanically picking and carrying out a course of action - a nod, a word of instruction, or merely a supportive silence - as befitting to Yanagi Renji, under even given situation.
It’s when he finds himself on the court and holding his captain’s jersey in his hands, though, that he doesn’t think. They’re getting in line for the award’s ceremony, and - from where he is standing - it is the most natural thing in the world for him to reach out and lay it gently over Seiichi’s shoulders.
Seiichi flinches. His head whips around sharply, but when his eyes meet Renji’s they soften into a pensive, almost trance-like quality. One that is fast becoming familiar.
It had been there, just a few seconds ago, as Seiichi had quietly but firmly steered their vice-captain in front of him in line to accept the second-place placard. It had been there as he had turned at the net, after shaking hands with Echizen, and surveyed then with a smile so slight that Renji thought he and Genichirou might have been the only ones to notice.
Renji doesn’t believe in premonitions.
But how is it, then, that he know this -- that they will make sense of the world again?
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The sound of “Bunta-kun! Bunta-kun!” through the dispersing crowd shakes him out of his stupor more effectively than, say, Sanada’s backhand ever could have.
And, sure enough, here was Akutagawa Jirou, skidding to a stop not three feet in front of him, eyes wide and bouncing and breathless and obviously very determined to give an inspired move-by-move account of Bunta’s most recent match.
Bunta half-listens, thinking that Jirou had an insanely good memory, and that, as always, was maybe just a little bit creepy, in the way his enthusiasm probably bordered pretty close on stalking. This time, though, Jirou was evidently crazy, and downright clueless as well, because only he would think that it was still a match worth getting excited about when Bunta had, well, lost.
He would tell Jirou this, if he hadn’t known that it would do no good. Just like it’d done no good all those times before, when he’d tried to make it clear that he could stand for less stalking and that, no, he didn’t particularly feel like giving his favorite wristband away as a memento.
Strange that, out of all the tasks Jirou could have appointed himself, he’d have chosen this -- to venerate Bunta and be unconditionally delighted by his technique. And tell him how awesome he was even at times when Bunta’s best might, for practical intents and purposes, have contributed nothing at all to his team.
Bunta thinks he just might be a little touched.
He’d deny it if anybody asked, of course (because, really, how could this genius have been depressed to begin with?). For now, he grins, interrupts Jirou, offers him the first thing that comes to mind - his last piece of gum - and laughs when Yukimura suddenly comes up from behind and claps him on the shoulder and asks, Bunta, weren’t you saving that for me?
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His knuckles connect with the left side of Yagyuu’s face with an audible crack, hard enough that Yagyuu staggers, but doesn’t lose his balance.
The glasses go clattering across the pavement and, when Yagyuu raises his head and begins stepping slowly but deliberately back towards Niou, his eyes are narrowed and downright feral, brimming with something a little too dangerous to be anger.
Not that Niou cared for any of it, at the moment. He thinks that Yagyuu needed to get it through his head that, when someone walked out of the stadium saying quite clearly not to follow them, your didn’t take it as your cue to tail them - for much longer than was decent - through the labyrinth of tennis courts outside.
And, even if you did, you didn’t babble at them, didn’t throw out smooth strings of empty words that just bordered on pity. Didn’t stare at them, like it was they who owed you an answer.
He throws a second punch, before Yagyuu can get any closer. Because Yagyuu thought that he got it, and that he knew about everything, but really didn’t. Not about losing in the final round of Nationals, when you’d resorted to every single trick you knew and when, didn’t he see, it was like you were somehow the turning point -- the beginning of a series of disasters you could have averted, if you’d only followed through on the chance to win the whole thing for Rikkai once and for all.
Yagyuu sidesteps, and Niou has only begun to think of retaliating when the pain hits the side of his face like an anvil. His head snaps back against the old brick wall that lines the side of the farmost court, where they’d stopped.
Before he can even recover enough to stop seeing stars, Yagyuu has his wrists pinned against the wall. Yagyuu, who must have purposely picked this angle, with his palms facing outward in a way that makes it damn near impossible for him to get any leverage.
“Don’t hit me again, ever,” says Yagyuu, voice furious and guttural and inches from his face.
He tries to get a kick in, but Yagyuu’s stepped in close, enough that they’re literally pressed against each other, and jammed one knee up against his legs to crush them to the wall so even that doesn’t end up connecting properly.
He struggles halfheartedly and swears and finally just shouts incoherently into Yagyuu’s ear, beyond caring whether they’d be overheard. The trickster has been cast aside for the moment. Not that his tricks had ever worked on Yagyuu, anyhow.
When he runs out of breath yelling, Yagyuu is still there. Still fixing him with a glare that threatened to drill holes through him and the wall and whatever was behind it.
Yagyuu says, flatly, “stop this.”
It’s the tone that makes him think twice, or makes him think rationally again, period. Yagyuu doesn’t sound like himself, doesn’t even sound like Yagyuu when he’s trying to be Niou. Niou in these circumstances would be all gentle goading and offhanded insight and puri and Yagyuu would, of course, be what he had been earlier -- reasonable enough to drive anyone mad.
The tone Yagyuu uses suggests neither. It could be only a few seconds that they stay there, glaring, each trying to figure out the other. It could also have been a lot longer.
The surface of the brick wall is warm, and so is Yagyuu, where the fabric of his jersey drapes itself against that of Niou’s and in all the other places they remain in physical contact. He wonders whether Yagyuu can feel him shaking, because he is. Because there’s the same heady, dizzying of sense freedom that he’d felt on the courts earlier, at the beginning of his match -- as if all the trappings and details of the world had been swept away, and everything that was left was a thousand times clearer, crystallized into an empty court under a scalding summer sun.
Stop this, Yagyuu had said. It’s a demand -- an action, and not a reason. Yet it’s the one thing that makes the most sense that he’s heard for a while.
“Fine,” he whispers, and smirks.
And when Yagyuu -- finally convinced that he wasn’t going to inflict any more physical damage -- loosens the grip on his wrists, he takes advantage of his freedom to grab the front of Yagyuu’s jersey, and yank him down into a kiss.
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There is a gap between them that looms wide and angry and perilous, and Yagyuu is not even aware that he’s trying to fill it with a question.
Does this change anything as far as we’re concerned?
He follows Niou out of the stadium and tries to reason with him, to the best of his ability, because he does not know what else to do.
The instant Niou hits him, he’s not aware of having found the answer, either.
No, not at all.
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Akaya stares at the sliding glass doors - not three feet in front of him - and swallows.
Beyond the faint glow of the entryway, darkness encroaches from all sides. It’s a day in the middle of August, but evening has long since given way to night, and the wind that catches his bare arms makes him shiver a little.
His fingertips tingle, throb a little to his heartbeat, fast and shallow. It makes him indignant, because it can’t be that he’s scared. It had to be something leftover from a few minutes ago, when the receptionist at the desk had spotted him as he paced past the door for the eighth or ninth time and had actually come outside -- probably to make sure he was alright -- and he had had to duck quickly around the corner of the building. Not that he wasn’t alright, but there was no way he could try to (or wanted to try to) explain to her why he was pacing around outside the door.
Akaya knows that sometimes he’s childish and absent-minded. That he’s too impulsive, and that’s why he always gets into trouble. He’s not good at calming down and staying still and thinking things over - he’s not Niou-senpai, who could walk up and start a conversation and then make it obvious that he was three steps ahead of you the whole time, just to drive you crazy.
But, walking out of the stadium earlier that day -- and, not being good at thinking, finding himself completely bewildered because dammit they lost and how could that be right? -- he finds himself struck by and convinced of something, so suddenly and surely that it’s almost (but not quite) scary.
Somehow, he just knew that this was the one thing he had to do, the one thing that had a chance of getting to the world to make sense again. So that, afterwards, even if things were never quite the same again, they’d at least feel right, and Akaya could go back to wholeheartedly plotting to beating his senpai and leading the club next year, without feeling like he’d left something undone.
He doesn’t know why he’s so convinced of it. He does know, though, that he remembers the look on Yanagi-senpai’s face (surprise, and respect, and maybe just a little bit of hope) when he’d half mumbled, senpai, do you think I should go apologize?
And he knows, too, that he doesn’t want to let Yanagi-senpai down.
Akaya inches one foot forward, mostly out of idle reflex. Then he jumps, because he hadn’t expected it to be enough to activate the sliding doors.
But it is, and they open. The receptionist looks up, half-curious and half-relieved. Probably because the fact that he existed proved she hadn’t been seeing things.
He couldn’t go back now.
As Akaya steps into the fluorescent lights of the hospital lobby, he reminds himself that he’s still going to beat the three demons of Rikkai. He’s still going to be number one.
He is not afraid of this.
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The first text message that he’s missed reads, this tensai knows you’re still awake ^_^ [00:58 a.m.].
The second he opens reads, you’re the insomniac b/c you worry too much, know that? not that its not a good thing in the middle of a game but, geez [01:19 a.m.]
The third, seriously, jackal, d’you think we COULD have played any better today? are we a better doubles pair this year or what? (the right answer by the way, is yes, you know it is) :P:P [01:24 a.m.]
The fourth and last one, and the one that had caught his attention in the first place with its blinking, reads, hope you’re not still reading this b/c yukimura says he’s taking us all out to sukiyaki tomorrow to make up for three days ago. get some sleep, you idiot. ^_~ [01:48 a.m.]
At 01:53 a.m., Jackal does just that.
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“Do you think less of me?”
Sanada stares.
He aches all over - despite a pounding head from lack of sleep and a still slightly-aching knee, he’d forced himself to rise at the usual hour. Thus, when Yukimura appeared at the door of the dojo, not more than an hour later, the sun itself was just barely visible over the edge of the horizon, and Yukimura’s shadow was long and cool against the wooden boards of the floor.
Sanada had seen the shadow right away, but ignored it. He was tired and mentally exhausted and knew who it belonged to but did not want to confirm it. Did not know what to make of Yukimura’s showing up at his house this early in the morning.
The shadow had hovered there, watching him swing the wooden sword over and over and over again. He was not sure how long it was before it finally said, “Sanada.”
Nor did he know what he had been apprehensive of, exactly, as he lowered the sword and turned wordlessly toward the door. It certainly was not that he expected, from Yukimura, the clumsy consolation and justifications that his family had tried to offer him all last night.
Yukimura had stood as a dark silhouette in the doorway, his back to the only source of light that entered the room in faint, bluish-gray hues, its shadows dancing almost like waves. It was what a drowning man would expect to see, staring up through the water and catching a glimpse of the shadow of his rescuer. When Yukimura stepped forward, enough for his face to be visible, there had been no expression to be read there.
And, whatever Sanada might have been expecting, it was not this, either. Not this particular question, posed without any preamble whatsoever.
A thousand different things hit him at once and he does not know what to think, what to say. Yukimura stands there, studying him, and dimly Sanada is grateful that both his best friends knew sincerity to be something that could not be rushed. They would never chide him for it, even if he freezes, as he does now, helpless to stop his mind from moving through time in leaps and bounds and in all directions at once.
He remembers going to the rehabilitation center one day two weeks ago and then leaving soon after because he could not stand it -- the sight of Yukimura driving himself to the brink of collapse in order that, when the time comes, he might hit just a little bit harder, move just a little bit faster, all the while not knowing just how far he could get.
He remembers Yukimura before the hospital, the first time they are introduced, strong-willed and intractable and blunt and hmm, Sanada-kun, what d’you think about taking over the tennis club next year?
He remembers Yukimura yesterday on the court at Nationals, his figure a blur of rustic gold and hair burning bright defiant blue under the August sun. He had yelled at one of their own club members whom he had caught taking up the phrase kami no ko, because it was a disgrace to the months that Yukimura had spent fighting and then fighting harder in order to be here, and even if none of the idiots at the arena had been there to see it, he, Sanada had.
This was, in the end, the same person who had turned at the net and given them all a small -- but by no means empty -- smile. Who had pushed him, firmly and without explanation, to the front of the line at the awards ceremony. Who had walked calmly into his dojo at dawn and was standing here now, still an overwhelmingly steady presence, still blunt and to the point and everything that was, well...Yukimura.
It is not that because Yukimura is the better tennis player, Sanada realizes. It has never been about Yukimura being the better tennis player.
It is the fight that Yukimura has put up for Rikkai. The will that drives him, even now. And how they are not things that Sanada could ever hope to match.
Yukimura scrutinizes him, with a gaze that is steady but not obtrusive. He’s wearing the same cryptic smile as yesterday, and there’s nothing in his demeanor to suggest that he has anything other than the utmost confidence in Sanada’s answer.
There was a time when Sanada would have taken this at face value, pointed to it -- the sheer infallibility and certainty that Yukimura seemed to exude -- as the reason he followed him. Now, though, even he can sense the tension heavy between them, can notice how Yukimura holds his hands stiffly furled at his sides, and know that Yukimura, too, is on edge, still slightly uncertain of whether Sanada will say something he is afraid to hear. There are faint circles under his eyes, and Sanada doubts he got much sleep last night, either.
Never, though, has he trusted Yukimura more.
Yukimura shifts in place and raises his eyebrows. His eyes are the calm and stormy blue that precedes a tempest, brimming -- just as they had on the court, yesterday -- with abandon and sheer will and maybe just a little bit of desperation.
There’s a torrent there that will be let loose, the instant Sanada makes his reply. He’ll see the relief wash through those eyes, lashing out and destroying the gap between them, and he’ll be pulled into and engulfed by its depths and the rest -- what might change, what might come next -- frightens him more than he’s ready to admit, because he doesn’t know what will happen after that.
Do you think less of me?
“No,” he whispers. “How could I?”
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by haruyuki
He knows he ought to feel disappointment, fury, disbelief, something. And he will, later. For the moment, though, as he stands at the net and watches Seigaku celebrate, Yukimura knows only a peaceful sort of emptiness, as if waking from a dream.
The entire time he waits for Echizen to return to the net, he doesn’t turn around -- doesn’t need to, to feel their gazes rivet him from behind, as steady and as persistent as the mid-afternoon sun that strikes his bare arms. They reach him with a stiff sort of support, as if trying to keep him upright. As if, in this one timeless moment in the aftermath of the match, the rest of his team was afraid that he would somehow physically fall. Collapsing, just like he had once before.
It would be easy to pretend that it was the absurdity of the thought that causes the smile to rise, unbidden, to his lips.
He doesn’t. He knows that there’s something else, something more.
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Despite what the unnatural accuracy of his predictions would suggest to someone who did not know him well, Renji does not believe at all in premonitions. Nor does he think that individual tennis matches can be treated as anything other than independent events, whose probabilities interact only in the simplest and slightest of ways, and whose outcomes are entirely unaffected by what came before and what will come after.
But how, then, does he explain the trepidation he feels as he’s calming Akaya down and leading him back to the stands after their match - the low-lying lump of panic in his stomach that suggests, irrationally, that everything was going to go wrong after this? How is it that he spends so much of the next three matches thinking about the concept of premonitions, if he does not have them and has never believed in them in the first place?
He wonders whether it is a side effect of this that, when the referee finally calls the game 6-4 in Echizen’s favor, his disbelief is not nearly as great as he’d expected it to be.
The next few minutes pass in jumps and starts, like a series of photographic stills that show a succession of faces, each its own distinct mixture of bewildered and angry and subdued. They appear in conjunction with a flurry of too-purposeful activity, as the non-regulars mill about the stands and pick things up in preparation for the awards ceremony.
He’s there in the middle of it all, taking in, analyzing each snapshot as it comes, and then mechanically picking and carrying out a course of action - a nod, a word of instruction, or merely a supportive silence - as befitting to Yanagi Renji, under even given situation.
It’s when he finds himself on the court and holding his captain’s jersey in his hands, though, that he doesn’t think. They’re getting in line for the award’s ceremony, and - from where he is standing - it is the most natural thing in the world for him to reach out and lay it gently over Seiichi’s shoulders.
Seiichi flinches. His head whips around sharply, but when his eyes meet Renji’s they soften into a pensive, almost trance-like quality. One that is fast becoming familiar.
It had been there, just a few seconds ago, as Seiichi had quietly but firmly steered their vice-captain in front of him in line to accept the second-place placard. It had been there as he had turned at the net, after shaking hands with Echizen, and surveyed then with a smile so slight that Renji thought he and Genichirou might have been the only ones to notice.
Renji doesn’t believe in premonitions.
But how is it, then, that he know this -- that they will make sense of the world again?
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The sound of “Bunta-kun! Bunta-kun!” through the dispersing crowd shakes him out of his stupor more effectively than, say, Sanada’s backhand ever could have.
And, sure enough, here was Akutagawa Jirou, skidding to a stop not three feet in front of him, eyes wide and bouncing and breathless and obviously very determined to give an inspired move-by-move account of Bunta’s most recent match.
Bunta half-listens, thinking that Jirou had an insanely good memory, and that, as always, was maybe just a little bit creepy, in the way his enthusiasm probably bordered pretty close on stalking. This time, though, Jirou was evidently crazy, and downright clueless as well, because only he would think that it was still a match worth getting excited about when Bunta had, well, lost.
He would tell Jirou this, if he hadn’t known that it would do no good. Just like it’d done no good all those times before, when he’d tried to make it clear that he could stand for less stalking and that, no, he didn’t particularly feel like giving his favorite wristband away as a memento.
Strange that, out of all the tasks Jirou could have appointed himself, he’d have chosen this -- to venerate Bunta and be unconditionally delighted by his technique. And tell him how awesome he was even at times when Bunta’s best might, for practical intents and purposes, have contributed nothing at all to his team.
Bunta thinks he just might be a little touched.
He’d deny it if anybody asked, of course (because, really, how could this genius have been depressed to begin with?). For now, he grins, interrupts Jirou, offers him the first thing that comes to mind - his last piece of gum - and laughs when Yukimura suddenly comes up from behind and claps him on the shoulder and asks, Bunta, weren’t you saving that for me?
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His knuckles connect with the left side of Yagyuu’s face with an audible crack, hard enough that Yagyuu staggers, but doesn’t lose his balance.
The glasses go clattering across the pavement and, when Yagyuu raises his head and begins stepping slowly but deliberately back towards Niou, his eyes are narrowed and downright feral, brimming with something a little too dangerous to be anger.
Not that Niou cared for any of it, at the moment. He thinks that Yagyuu needed to get it through his head that, when someone walked out of the stadium saying quite clearly not to follow them, your didn’t take it as your cue to tail them - for much longer than was decent - through the labyrinth of tennis courts outside.
And, even if you did, you didn’t babble at them, didn’t throw out smooth strings of empty words that just bordered on pity. Didn’t stare at them, like it was they who owed you an answer.
He throws a second punch, before Yagyuu can get any closer. Because Yagyuu thought that he got it, and that he knew about everything, but really didn’t. Not about losing in the final round of Nationals, when you’d resorted to every single trick you knew and when, didn’t he see, it was like you were somehow the turning point -- the beginning of a series of disasters you could have averted, if you’d only followed through on the chance to win the whole thing for Rikkai once and for all.
Yagyuu sidesteps, and Niou has only begun to think of retaliating when the pain hits the side of his face like an anvil. His head snaps back against the old brick wall that lines the side of the farmost court, where they’d stopped.
Before he can even recover enough to stop seeing stars, Yagyuu has his wrists pinned against the wall. Yagyuu, who must have purposely picked this angle, with his palms facing outward in a way that makes it damn near impossible for him to get any leverage.
“Don’t hit me again, ever,” says Yagyuu, voice furious and guttural and inches from his face.
He tries to get a kick in, but Yagyuu’s stepped in close, enough that they’re literally pressed against each other, and jammed one knee up against his legs to crush them to the wall so even that doesn’t end up connecting properly.
He struggles halfheartedly and swears and finally just shouts incoherently into Yagyuu’s ear, beyond caring whether they’d be overheard. The trickster has been cast aside for the moment. Not that his tricks had ever worked on Yagyuu, anyhow.
When he runs out of breath yelling, Yagyuu is still there. Still fixing him with a glare that threatened to drill holes through him and the wall and whatever was behind it.
Yagyuu says, flatly, “stop this.”
It’s the tone that makes him think twice, or makes him think rationally again, period. Yagyuu doesn’t sound like himself, doesn’t even sound like Yagyuu when he’s trying to be Niou. Niou in these circumstances would be all gentle goading and offhanded insight and puri and Yagyuu would, of course, be what he had been earlier -- reasonable enough to drive anyone mad.
The tone Yagyuu uses suggests neither. It could be only a few seconds that they stay there, glaring, each trying to figure out the other. It could also have been a lot longer.
The surface of the brick wall is warm, and so is Yagyuu, where the fabric of his jersey drapes itself against that of Niou’s and in all the other places they remain in physical contact. He wonders whether Yagyuu can feel him shaking, because he is. Because there’s the same heady, dizzying of sense freedom that he’d felt on the courts earlier, at the beginning of his match -- as if all the trappings and details of the world had been swept away, and everything that was left was a thousand times clearer, crystallized into an empty court under a scalding summer sun.
Stop this, Yagyuu had said. It’s a demand -- an action, and not a reason. Yet it’s the one thing that makes the most sense that he’s heard for a while.
“Fine,” he whispers, and smirks.
And when Yagyuu -- finally convinced that he wasn’t going to inflict any more physical damage -- loosens the grip on his wrists, he takes advantage of his freedom to grab the front of Yagyuu’s jersey, and yank him down into a kiss.
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There is a gap between them that looms wide and angry and perilous, and Yagyuu is not even aware that he’s trying to fill it with a question.
Does this change anything as far as we’re concerned?
He follows Niou out of the stadium and tries to reason with him, to the best of his ability, because he does not know what else to do.
The instant Niou hits him, he’s not aware of having found the answer, either.
No, not at all.
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Akaya stares at the sliding glass doors - not three feet in front of him - and swallows.
Beyond the faint glow of the entryway, darkness encroaches from all sides. It’s a day in the middle of August, but evening has long since given way to night, and the wind that catches his bare arms makes him shiver a little.
His fingertips tingle, throb a little to his heartbeat, fast and shallow. It makes him indignant, because it can’t be that he’s scared. It had to be something leftover from a few minutes ago, when the receptionist at the desk had spotted him as he paced past the door for the eighth or ninth time and had actually come outside -- probably to make sure he was alright -- and he had had to duck quickly around the corner of the building. Not that he wasn’t alright, but there was no way he could try to (or wanted to try to) explain to her why he was pacing around outside the door.
Akaya knows that sometimes he’s childish and absent-minded. That he’s too impulsive, and that’s why he always gets into trouble. He’s not good at calming down and staying still and thinking things over - he’s not Niou-senpai, who could walk up and start a conversation and then make it obvious that he was three steps ahead of you the whole time, just to drive you crazy.
But, walking out of the stadium earlier that day -- and, not being good at thinking, finding himself completely bewildered because dammit they lost and how could that be right? -- he finds himself struck by and convinced of something, so suddenly and surely that it’s almost (but not quite) scary.
Somehow, he just knew that this was the one thing he had to do, the one thing that had a chance of getting to the world to make sense again. So that, afterwards, even if things were never quite the same again, they’d at least feel right, and Akaya could go back to wholeheartedly plotting to beating his senpai and leading the club next year, without feeling like he’d left something undone.
He doesn’t know why he’s so convinced of it. He does know, though, that he remembers the look on Yanagi-senpai’s face (surprise, and respect, and maybe just a little bit of hope) when he’d half mumbled, senpai, do you think I should go apologize?
And he knows, too, that he doesn’t want to let Yanagi-senpai down.
Akaya inches one foot forward, mostly out of idle reflex. Then he jumps, because he hadn’t expected it to be enough to activate the sliding doors.
But it is, and they open. The receptionist looks up, half-curious and half-relieved. Probably because the fact that he existed proved she hadn’t been seeing things.
He couldn’t go back now.
As Akaya steps into the fluorescent lights of the hospital lobby, he reminds himself that he’s still going to beat the three demons of Rikkai. He’s still going to be number one.
He is not afraid of this.
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The first text message that he’s missed reads, this tensai knows you’re still awake ^_^ [00:58 a.m.].
The second he opens reads, you’re the insomniac b/c you worry too much, know that? not that its not a good thing in the middle of a game but, geez [01:19 a.m.]
The third, seriously, jackal, d’you think we COULD have played any better today? are we a better doubles pair this year or what? (the right answer by the way, is yes, you know it is) :P:P [01:24 a.m.]
The fourth and last one, and the one that had caught his attention in the first place with its blinking, reads, hope you’re not still reading this b/c yukimura says he’s taking us all out to sukiyaki tomorrow to make up for three days ago. get some sleep, you idiot. ^_~ [01:48 a.m.]
At 01:53 a.m., Jackal does just that.
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“Do you think less of me?”
Sanada stares.
He aches all over - despite a pounding head from lack of sleep and a still slightly-aching knee, he’d forced himself to rise at the usual hour. Thus, when Yukimura appeared at the door of the dojo, not more than an hour later, the sun itself was just barely visible over the edge of the horizon, and Yukimura’s shadow was long and cool against the wooden boards of the floor.
Sanada had seen the shadow right away, but ignored it. He was tired and mentally exhausted and knew who it belonged to but did not want to confirm it. Did not know what to make of Yukimura’s showing up at his house this early in the morning.
The shadow had hovered there, watching him swing the wooden sword over and over and over again. He was not sure how long it was before it finally said, “Sanada.”
Nor did he know what he had been apprehensive of, exactly, as he lowered the sword and turned wordlessly toward the door. It certainly was not that he expected, from Yukimura, the clumsy consolation and justifications that his family had tried to offer him all last night.
Yukimura had stood as a dark silhouette in the doorway, his back to the only source of light that entered the room in faint, bluish-gray hues, its shadows dancing almost like waves. It was what a drowning man would expect to see, staring up through the water and catching a glimpse of the shadow of his rescuer. When Yukimura stepped forward, enough for his face to be visible, there had been no expression to be read there.
And, whatever Sanada might have been expecting, it was not this, either. Not this particular question, posed without any preamble whatsoever.
A thousand different things hit him at once and he does not know what to think, what to say. Yukimura stands there, studying him, and dimly Sanada is grateful that both his best friends knew sincerity to be something that could not be rushed. They would never chide him for it, even if he freezes, as he does now, helpless to stop his mind from moving through time in leaps and bounds and in all directions at once.
He remembers going to the rehabilitation center one day two weeks ago and then leaving soon after because he could not stand it -- the sight of Yukimura driving himself to the brink of collapse in order that, when the time comes, he might hit just a little bit harder, move just a little bit faster, all the while not knowing just how far he could get.
He remembers Yukimura before the hospital, the first time they are introduced, strong-willed and intractable and blunt and hmm, Sanada-kun, what d’you think about taking over the tennis club next year?
He remembers Yukimura yesterday on the court at Nationals, his figure a blur of rustic gold and hair burning bright defiant blue under the August sun. He had yelled at one of their own club members whom he had caught taking up the phrase kami no ko, because it was a disgrace to the months that Yukimura had spent fighting and then fighting harder in order to be here, and even if none of the idiots at the arena had been there to see it, he, Sanada had.
This was, in the end, the same person who had turned at the net and given them all a small -- but by no means empty -- smile. Who had pushed him, firmly and without explanation, to the front of the line at the awards ceremony. Who had walked calmly into his dojo at dawn and was standing here now, still an overwhelmingly steady presence, still blunt and to the point and everything that was, well...Yukimura.
It is not that because Yukimura is the better tennis player, Sanada realizes. It has never been about Yukimura being the better tennis player.
It is the fight that Yukimura has put up for Rikkai. The will that drives him, even now. And how they are not things that Sanada could ever hope to match.
Yukimura scrutinizes him, with a gaze that is steady but not obtrusive. He’s wearing the same cryptic smile as yesterday, and there’s nothing in his demeanor to suggest that he has anything other than the utmost confidence in Sanada’s answer.
There was a time when Sanada would have taken this at face value, pointed to it -- the sheer infallibility and certainty that Yukimura seemed to exude -- as the reason he followed him. Now, though, even he can sense the tension heavy between them, can notice how Yukimura holds his hands stiffly furled at his sides, and know that Yukimura, too, is on edge, still slightly uncertain of whether Sanada will say something he is afraid to hear. There are faint circles under his eyes, and Sanada doubts he got much sleep last night, either.
Never, though, has he trusted Yukimura more.
Yukimura shifts in place and raises his eyebrows. His eyes are the calm and stormy blue that precedes a tempest, brimming -- just as they had on the court, yesterday -- with abandon and sheer will and maybe just a little bit of desperation.
There’s a torrent there that will be let loose, the instant Sanada makes his reply. He’ll see the relief wash through those eyes, lashing out and destroying the gap between them, and he’ll be pulled into and engulfed by its depths and the rest -- what might change, what might come next -- frightens him more than he’s ready to admit, because he doesn’t know what will happen after that.
Do you think less of me?
“No,” he whispers. “How could I?”
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